


i could promise you the moon but i won't

by babyhulk



Category: Cricket RPF
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explosions (but not the actually explosive kind), India Test Series 2020-21, Insecurity, Intentional Misunderstandings (because Josh said so), M/M, Minor Injuries, Pain, Pat is a good friend, Some Humor, cameos from your aussie test squad, so we suffer twice! joy, there's a dad joke in there somewhere, to the shock of everybody Maxi makes no appearance in this fic and I cannot believe it either
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-16 09:15:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29329920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babyhulk/pseuds/babyhulk
Summary: “What happened with you and Mitch?”Josh snorts. “You mean you didn’t hear it from him?Bloodylikely, that.”“I never heard it from you.”“Pat.”A sigh. “Why are you doing this? You told him you feel nothing for him, nothing, Josh. Why lie to his face?”Look at me. Look at me and tell me you feel nothing,Mitch had said.And Josh had.Pat’s eyes are pleading, deep blue and questioning, confused. Guilt crawls up Josh’s throat, fluttering there like a hummingbird’s wings. He looks away from his best mate’s face and down at the hands he had subconsciously curled into his pants.“Doesn’t matter,” he mutters.~~~Or, Josh lies to Mitch about his feelings for him because he's terrified he isn't good enough, Pat walks a fine line between his two best mates and JL really thinks he knows but doesn't.
Relationships: Mitchell Starc/Josh Hazlewood
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	i could promise you the moon but i won't

**Author's Note:**

> Ah yes... I'm back...shoutout to rosetylars on here and Alex for yanking me into the abyss that is Mitch and Josh (or starcwood as I've affectionately dubbed them). One day Alex says, "so here me out. Josh and Mitch." And as with every conversation like this with Alex, I've found myself here...
> 
> Inspired by this fic, ["just let me adore you",](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28853997) and originally planned as an alternate ending but tbh spiralled from where it broke off from this storyline and became this WHOLE other thing...
> 
> Song for the fic: Blind to You by Aimer
> 
> I just hope you guys enjoy it hahah

The lump in his throat is thick as he walks away, the door of the supply closet clanging shut against its frame, ringing in his ears in a rising harmony with his pounding heart.

_You can never belong to me._

Regret coats his tongue like ash. Every footstep echoes in his head. The torture of the finality of his words, of leaving Mitch there in that dark, musty place after rejecting him…it’s like a dagger twisting beneath his lungs, every step plunging the blade deeper into the shackled, weeping corner of his heart that begs him to turn around.

But he grits his teeth and keeps walking, refusing to acknowledge the looming lonely night and the days of cricket left in this match where he would have to exist in Mitch’s space without running away like he aches to do.

Just so he wouldn’t have to deal with it.

The voices in his head are clamouring, shouting and writhing to be heard above the resonant pull of his heart in the opposite direction, and Josh desperately tries to hold on to the numb blankness of his mind as it threatens to slip through his fingers and push him under. The rising wave of darkness is frightening as it lingers around the edges of his brain, hands shaking in the fists that they’re clutched within.

 _Mitch deserves better,_ whispers an ugly little voice in the expanse of encroaching black.

A sharp inhale tears through his throat. _Why do you fucking think I’m walking away?_ he hisses at himself.

 _Good, good,_ leers the voice. _Walk away. Walk away, he can do so much better that you. _

His step falters. A breath hitches in his chest and the sound that spills from his mouth is torn. His heart batters itself against his ribs with an intensity that makes his head spin as he forces himself to keep walking.

Just another step.

One more.

Another.

One foot in front of the other.

The noise of the dressing room gets louder as he turns the corner, laughter and bantering voices trickling out into the bustling hallway outside.

The next breath he takes is deep, shuddering through him, until he can straighten his shoulders and compel his face to look less like he’s on the verge of crumpling to his knees beneath the buffeting waves of anxiety rolling around in his head.

He steps into the room.

“Hey, Josh! Mate, have you seen the chest guard I borrowed from Starcy?”

Though his throat tightens at the name, he just manages to shrug. “Nah, sorry, mate.”

 _“Dammit,”_ Cam sighs and wonders away.

Smile fading as fast as it had risen, Josh collapses onto the bench in front of his locker and tips his head back, closing his eyes.

His throat aches as he swallows.

Losing Mitch like this, ripped away with ragged edges and glass shards, after a decade of being near inseparable, drives the final fatal twist of that dagger into his chest. Mitch would never speak to him again. Josh would just have to be okay with that and be in love with him from afar.

It would be fine.

It has to be.

*

Seeing Mitch turn away from his table at breakfast in the cold light of the next morning makes the near-breakdown of last night raw and glaring, residual humiliation lingering as he’s forced to look the consequences of his terror-fuelled words in the eye, the way he had imploded in the face of Mitch’s honesty, his bravery.

 _Fuck because Mitch had been so brave._ And Josh had thrown it all back in his face.

Josh cuts his gaze away and stomps on the niggling tendril of last night’s anxiety trying to work its way back up to ruin a new day.

 _Not today, you fucking piece of shit,_ he thinks vehemently, irritably.

The overwhelming crush of his emotions seems ridiculous in the light of day, as it usually does after he has a bad night, when it felt like everything was caving in and nothing would be okay. He would wake up the next morning just as he had done this morning and feel like an idiot for overreacting.

But Josh thinks, as he catches Mitch slipping into a chair beside Nathan with a plate of sunny-side-up eggs, stir-fried mushrooms and grilled tomatoes, that as terrified as he had been, his choice had been right.

He would leave Mitch alone. Mitch has always deserved the world but Josh can never give it to him, not as broken and uncertain as he is.

*

“What are you doing?”

Josh doesn’t look up from his mechanical folding and packing, shirt after shirt, pants, boxers, a metronome _tickingtickingticking_ as he works. “Cleaning up, mate, what’s it look like.”

Pat sighs at him, leaning forward onto his knees. “Josh.”

“Pat, what’re you doing here?” He asks, finally throwing away the stupid sweatpants in his hands with the tangled strings onto his suitcase and turning around. “Shouldn’t you be out with M—the others?”

“That’s exactly what I’m here about and you know it.” Pat shifts on the bed, sheets rustling. “What happened with you and Mitch?”

Josh snorts. “You mean you didn’t hear it from him? _Bloody_ likely, that.”

“I never heard it from you.”

“Pat.”

A sigh. “Why are you doing this? You told him you feel nothing for him, _nothing,_ Josh. Why lie to his face?”

 _Look at me. Look at me and tell me you feel nothing,_ Mitch had said.

And Josh had.

Pat’s eyes are pleading, deep blue and questioning, confused. Guilt crawls up Josh’s throat, fluttering there like a hummingbird’s wings. He looks away from his best mate’s face and down at the hands he had subconsciously curled into his pants.

“Doesn’t matter,” he mutters.

“Doesn’t matter?” Pat asks, sounding bewildered. “You’re _miserable_. Both of you, even though he’s not acting like it.”

Guess that answers the question Josh didn’t want to ask. _How is he—_ fuck, the stab of guilt is nauseating. But Mitch will see one day that Josh made a good call. He has to have for this fucking heartbreak to be worth it.

“But he’s good at that, you know that just as well as I do,” Pat continues. “Of course it _matters,_ Josh. Who is this helping?”

 _ME,_ Josh doesn’t say, but the words explode in his chest, shrapnel piercing the soft flesh of his already shattered heart. _I’m trying to save me from the inevitable day Mitch realises that I’m not what he wants. I am not what he needs._ The selfishness, most of all, is what makes revulsion rush through him.

He’s just trying to save his own fucking skin. Selfish. So _fucking_ selfish.

_I don’t know what you’re fucking talking about. Feel what, Mitch? For you? I wouldn’t fucking dare, not when you’ve got the whole world at your feet. I won’t be the one to let down Mitchell Starc, okay? Besides…like I said, I’m not interested._

God, he couldn’t be _more_ interested.

The memory of his own quietly roared words is the last between them. Josh wonders if he has any right to feel this sick with the realisation that Mitch would always remember him that way, that Mitch’s last memory of him is twisted up in a rejection he didn’t deserve, when it had been his own fault.

As Josh’s silence lingers, Pat must see it in his face because there’s a soft _Josh_ before Pat sinks onto his knees and shuffles across the carpet to sit on the floor in front of Josh.

“Hey.”

Josh can’t look at him, shame leaden in the pit of his stomach, a trembling fear pulsating in the beat of his heart that someone is there to witness this insecurity, this ugly weakness he tries to bury every day. That it’s Pat is somehow worse.

The self-hatred is venomous as it lashes out in his head. His brain whirls with it. He ducks his head into his chest as his shoulders curl towards his ears, trying to hide from Pat’s searching eyes. Pat has always had an inescapable ability to read Josh through his eyes no matter what his mouth was saying, even from the beginning.

 _“Hey,”_ Pat repeats quietly. He clasps his hands onto Josh’s shoulders, anchoring. “Josh, you’re fine. I promise you, you’re okay.”

His pulse thumps ragged.

Pat shifts his hands down to Josh’s forearms in a warm press of comfort.

“You’re okay,” Pat repeats and his voice is gentle. “We’ll figure it out. Whether you want to get over these feelings or work it out with Mitch, I’ll be right here until you figure it out.”

 _Get over these feelings?_ Does Pat know how long Josh has sat on these feelings, burying them beneath layer upon layer of fear and denial?

To be completely honest, he probably does.

Pat knows him like the back of his own hand, like he knows how to bowl a bouncer or subtly shift the seam of the ball to make a batsman misstep and send the ball rattling into a fielder’s hands; the point is, Pat knows Josh better than Josh probably knows himself and Josh sometimes finds himself feeling like the younger one in the four years between them because Pat’s quieter, introspective nature makes him feel wiser in ways Josh just isn’t.

A strangled sound is all Josh can make and it bleeds into a hitched laugh. He looks up into Pat’s warm eyes before dropping his gaze back to his fingers twisted into the stretched material of his sweatpants, overwhelmed.

“You sound sure that I’ll figure it out.”

“One of us has to be, for both of us,” is all Pat says and squeezes Josh’s arms again before sitting back.

There are words floating through the hazy mess in Josh’s head that want to slip out, lean into the firm comfort that Pat offers and let someone help him, for once.

“I don’t know how to stop feeling like this.” The confession tumbles out, helpless, breathing shallow as his heart thumps slow and _hard_ against his ribs. Blindly, Josh wonders if this is what it feels like to die.

When Josh manages to look away from the tremors in his fingers, Pat smiles like he’s in pain, eyes gleaming in the late evening sunlight pouring into the room. His throat clenches tight and he tears his gaze away, crushing his stinging eyes shut even as Pat’s heartbroken face swims inside his closed eyelids.

 _Fuck’s sake._ All he’s capable of doing is hurting the people he cares about the most.

“Josh,” Pat says. His voice is low and rough but certain, the stalwart support of an ancient oak in a raging hurricane. “You’ll figure that out too. You’re not alone, mate, I promise. Despite what it may seem like right now, Mitch is here for you too. This entire team, we are all here for each other. But even if no one else is, _I’m here._ I will always be your best mate, alright? Whatever it is, Joshie, you can come to me.”

Josh swipes at the tears that tumble down his cheeks unbidden, feeling nothing but absolute horror that he is crying amidst the mass of darkness in his head. “Fuck.” He sniffs. “Stop making me cry, you _asshole.”_ He sighs then, slathering away the fresh tears across his face. “You are a much better mate that I deserve.”

Pat makes a sound that sounds mortally offended as he punches Josh’s arm hard enough to make him wince. “Shut the fuck up, you self-deprecating moron.”

Josh laughs aloud then, something like relief cracking through into his chest. “Big word.” He digs his nails into his thighs. He looks up into Pat’s worried face and exhales heavily, finally able to breathe deep into his lungs. “Thank you,” he says. “Seriously. Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me for being a decent human being.” Pat huffs a disbelieving laugh. “Jeez, Josh.”

He climbs to his feet and offers Josh a hand.

“C’mon. You and I are gonna go get sundaes from the pool bar and eat them right in front of JL’s face. Heard he was sunning himself out on the deck.”

Marnus likely sent a friendly warning text with a picture attached to the squad chat. Josh honestly thinks— _knows—_ that Marnus is going to get himself decked one of these days and he’d probably deserve it, the pest.

A chuckle spills out of Josh as he takes Pat’s hand and pulls himself to his feet. He wipes his face with the collar of his shirt. “ _Fuck_ …can’t believe I fucking cried.”

“I won’t hold it against you,” Pat says lightly, heading for the door. “Change your shirt. Those sundaes are calling our names.”

As Josh tugs on a less tearstained t-shirt, all he feels is a dawning sense of gratefulness, thankful eternally to Pat who had never once faltered despite Josh being fucking messed up inside.

“Reckon JL will say anything?”

Pat’s grin is devilish. “Not if we buy him one too.”

Josh chuckles as Pat leads the way down the hall towards the lifts. “Bribing the coach? Poster boy Pat isn’t as squeaky clean as they’d have you believe.”

The eye-roll in response is softened by the years of banter behind the comment. Josh still refuses to let go of the fact that Pat sweats like he’s shooting a magazine spread, sprayed down with water instead of actual sweat, hair falling in perfectly wet strands across his forehead, skin glowing instead of splotchy like mortal men. Hell, Pat wears champagne and beer on his skin as if he’s always meant to be soaked in it. Maxi had informed them all that the internet had collectively lost it when it had been revealed that Pat did newspaper crosswords with his breakfast.

“One day you’re going to end up on Sports Illustrated,” Josh tells him.

Pat snorts. “Where the fuck did that come from?”

Josh just shrugs. “Mark my words, Patty boy, you’ll be a star.”

“Shut it,” is the wry response. “By the way, what was that movie you made me watch the other day?” Pat asks a moment later.

 _“Made_ you watch?” Josh teases. “ _Tin Cup,_ mate, and you bloody well enjoyed it!”

Pat laughs. “It was a decent movie! A whole lot better than sitting through the extended _Lord of the Rings—”_

 _“Oi!”_ Josh lunges at him. “Take that back— _Patrick!”_

Pat dives out of reach and races for the lifts with a laugh.

*

Mitch turns away from the peephole in the door as Josh and Pat disappear down the corridor.

The gaping hole that Josh had torn open in his life rings with a silence so piercing, Mitch almost wants to slap his hands over his ears and scream. The distant laughter outside still makes his chest squeeze tight with a warmth he had once thought was mutual.

Guess not.

*

The fallout from the lost series is a nuclear meltdown, poisonous if you stopped long enough to listen to the commentary of every single person who suddenly became a fucking cricketing expert overnight, pouring ill-intentioned criticism and misplaced national pride over the heads of players who knew their own game a far sight better than the internet believed they did, than the _critics_ believed they did.

He wonders if Australia would even have a cricket team if selection was based on the exaggerated headlines of the media desperate for views and clicks. Tim would’ve been dropped at least half a dozen times, at _least._ He wonders too if they would ever be more than something to be owned by the public, if they would ever really be considered _people_ that exist beyond the boundaries of a stadium _._

Josh cringes as he sees Pat’s text when he steps out of the bathroom and a shiver slithers down his spine, chasing away the heat of the shower as he drops his towel onto the bed, exhaling slowly.

He had spent almost an hour standing under the pouring water, letting the heat pummel away at his aching, sore shoulders, at the back of his neck, the chill of the tiles soothing against the last vestiges of the migraine slowly being suppressed by the painkillers he had tossed back in the bus back to the hotel.

The series loss stings. It stings like having nails hammered into your chest.

The downturned, flattened corners of JL’s mouth had followed them long after the cameras were cut, into the ghostly silence of a miserable dressing room and hung over them with their own dismal disappointment at themselves. Nathan’s agony had almost been tangible, the way he had sat and stared at the grey flooring with blank eyes, unaware of anything around him until Mitch had squeezed his shoulder to encourage him to pack his things. Losing a match they should have won always slices deep but Josh can’t imagine how losing like this in your hundredth test would feel.

Though the heat of the water had eased the nausea making his stomach roll, nothing can erase the bitter taste in the back of his throat, the exhaustion leaden down to his bones that threatens to make his knees give out with every step.

_Elite honesty. Elite mateship. Elite athlete. Elite—_

The scoff that trips out of him is a twisted burst of sound.

_So much for fucking elite._

He knows this is the aftermath of the series talking, the little voice in the back of his head sneering the word with all the lacerating power of a broken soul. It burrows into his chest with spurs and lodges itself there, uncomfortable and obvious.

But the look in Mitch’s eyes as he had collapsed onto his bench in the dressing room haunts Josh more, the way the words had crowded his throat, the _I wish I could’ve done more_ and _I’m sorry I wasn’t enough_ and _you haven’t let us down I swear, the timing is just really shit_ and, unfairly, selfishly, _I love you, I’m sorry, don’t listen to anyone else just hear me, I love you. _But he had said none of it, too overwhelmed himself and terrified that, beyond that on-field shoulder pat of consolation, he would be pushed away.

Josh swallows, shaking himself out of his head and glancing back down at his phone where Pat’s text sits, waiting.

_From: Pat_

_You know I wouldn’t ask anything of you_

_But he needs you_

His exhale is shaky.

It’s the muffled, echoing _crash_ of something hitting a wall very, _very_ hard that startles him into motion, halfway out the door before he realises that he’s made a decision. The fact that the sound drove through several rooms through to his makes his stomach curl in anticipation of what he would find.

The hallway is empty, doors firmly shut to hold in the emotions seeping out through the cracks in the resilience they’ve driven into place over time. Only Pat is to be seen, leaning back against his door, head thumped back against the wood and arms crossed, eyes closed against the sounds from the room opposite.

“ _Fucking FORTRESS Gabba! What a FUCKING JOKE—!”_

The bellow startles Josh and his door slams shut behind him as he falters, footsteps stuttering on the hallway carpet. The words ring between his ears. _Fortress Gabba, indeed._

Something shatters in the wake of Mitch’s roar.

Pat’s pinched brow tightens, mouth pressing into a tense line. But his eyes snap open with the slam of Josh’s door and when he looks up at him, the worry clouding those blue eyes stings like a fresh wound.

Josh’s chest feels hollow as he makes his way down to where Pat is, using the door for support as he stands opposite Mitch’s room. He says nothing, letting himself settle next to Pat, pressing their shoulders together to offer what comfort he can, not trusting his voice.

_“FUCK.”_

Pat physically recoils as it reverberates between the hallway walls and Josh just pushes himself closer to him, his own heart squeezing at the anguish that drips like tar from Mitch’s hoarse voice.

“Shit,” Pat whispers under his breath. _“Shit.”_

The guilt is palpable.

“This isn’t on you,” Josh manages quietly. The thud of a fist on a wall feels like it sinks through his own stomach like a punch. _“Fuck,”_ he can’t help breathing out.

The fact that nobody else is out here, that nobody is trying to stop Mitch from destroying the room or worse, hurting _himself,_ speaks volumes of the pain and defeated frustration the whole squad is struggling against.

There’s a strangled snarl.

“— _not fucking good enough—”_

It plucks at Josh’s heart like a rusted blade against harp strings.

He can’t take it anymore. He can’t stand here and listen to Mitch fall apart.

He surges forward, jerking like a ragdoll as his bare feet slip against the carpet, and slams into Mitch’s door.

“Mitch,” he calls roughly. “ _Mitch_ , open the door.”

Something hits the door with a thump.

Josh inhales, breath sharp and uneven in his throat, and raises his fist to the door. In his desperate attempt at knocking until it pisses off Mitch enough to open the door, Josh’s hand slips.

As his knuckles hit the handle and pushes it down, the door clicks open.

It’s unlocked.

_Unlocked._

It had _been_ unlocked _—_

He whirls around to Pat.

Pat stares with wide, wide eyes for a few ringing moments before he straightens, rolling his shoulders back until he’s looking at Josh with an unwavering expression. “Go. _Go_ , he needs you _.”_

Josh doesn’t waste another second.

He pushes into the room, bursting in on the tail end of another swearing hiss from Mitch, anger and heartbreak, frustration and terror swirling through the chaos of the room. His chest winches tight at the sight that greets him.

Mitch is facing away from the door, shoulders heaving with the force of his gasping breaths, when Josh skids to a stop on the carpet.

Even here, hours later, he hasn’t changed, the grass-smudged right flank of his test whites dark in the shadow of the only lamp that has survived the destruction, the uniform crumpled and untucked, collar stretched wide as if Mitch had tried to tear it off his body, back straining against the material. Sweat glistens like diamonds in the short strands of hair at his nape.

The exhaustion that Josh _knows_ Mitch feels from the exertion of the day is only obvious in the shake of his hands, hanging by his sides, fingers trembling, none of the power left to curl into fists the way Josh has seen when Mitch gets angry. That, the fragility of it in someone who always tries to be so strong for everyone else, makes something fracture inside his chest.

The room is a mess, inner turmoil pouring out in an explosion, suitcase knocked over, clothes splayed across the floor. The bare mattress is askew on its base, bed linen flung against the window and pooling on the ground. The desk is scraped empty, all its contents strewn across the floor, the room telephone in the metal wastepaper basket. There’s a faint dent in the wall that makes Josh wince absently as he skims over it, seeing Mitch’s phone lying at its base, screen ruptured into a spiderweb of glittering cracks. Beyond them, he can see the faint outlines of Twitter.

There’s a glass shattered in the middle of the bathroom when Josh glances into it and his breath leaves him in a rush as he spots the little drops of red splattered amongst the shards.

Mitch growls and Josh’s spine stiffens at the agony of it.

As Mitch turns and raises his foot to kick the chair clear across the room in a move that may well have shattered the windows, Josh throws himself forward in what feels like a fever-dream, flinging himself against his back and pinning his arms to his sides as he wraps his own around Mitch, holding him violently and so, _so_ tight to his chest until the rocking force of the sudden impact slows to a stop.

Josh holds Mitch’s heaving body in his arms, head pressed to the side of Mitch’s, and feels his breath punch out of him when he feels the thunderous pounding of Mitch’s heart against his chest through his back, offbeat and bewildering against the sudden palpitations of his own racing heart.

Mitch’s breathing is audible, panting breaths flowing from his mouth as he freezes in Josh’s arms but he says nothing, motionless and gasping for air, thrumming with resentment and a despair so deeply bitter it threatens to snaps like a guitar string pulled too tight. The sound of his grating breaths cuts deep into sinew and muscle, down to bone, until it aches in Josh’s soul.

He wants to absorb Mitch’s pain into his body, inject it into his own veins and relieve some of this agony that has Mitch tearing apart at the seams. To get onto social media if only to tell them all to leave Mitch well enough alone because can’t they _see,_ can’t they imagine how these barbed words feel. To rip into every ungrateful asshole who thinks they know this game, these skillsbetter than Mitchell Starc, rip into those don’t understand the physical toll, the _emotional_ toll that it takes when they don’t perform the way they know they can, the way they need to for their team in those crucial moments.

 _“Mitch,”_ he breathes.

Mitch goes still.

Mitch goes apex-predator-in-a-suddenly-silent-forest still.

Josh can only breathe in as he shifts his arms around him and keep him there, dropping his chin to fold over Mitch’s hard shoulder, ear pressed to his clenched jaw, and just. Hold him. Their breathing echoes around them in the abrupt hush of the room.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. He hopes he doesn’t sound as torn apart as he feels. _“You’re okay.”_

Mitch is rigid, unmoving.

So he just holds him and holds him until, inch-by-inch, minutes and hours and centuries later, Mitch’s straining body melts back into the support Josh offers, relaxes infinitesimally bit by bit until he exhales a gusty sigh, shoulders rolling down, and shocks Josh by curling his hands around Josh’s forearms, hands warm and fingers strong.

Josh hopes that his startled, piercing inhale goes unheard.

Despite the force, Josh can feel the fine tremors in the fingers that grip him.

But he doesn’t loosen his own grip, just keeps that tight, anchoring hold on Mitch until Mitch’s breathing settles and his heart is no longer racing at what was probably well over one twenty beats a minute.

When the sigh that Mitch breathes out is soft instead of shrouded in thorns, defeated in its quietness, and shifts in the circle of Josh’s arms as if he means to turn around, Josh stiffens.

They hadn’t talked in well over a week now and the sudden terror of Mitch turning around and even just _looking_ at him is overwhelming, and the questions that would follow…he _can’t—_

 _What are you DOING,_ the little voice pipes up. _What have you done?_

If Mitch looks at him now, he would see that every word Josh had said to him a week ago was a lie because Josh knows what he looks like right now, why he came bursting in here when everyone else had been steering clear to leave Mitch alone. Why even Pat hadn’t tried the door. Josh knows his flushed ears and the pained furrow across his brows would give away exactly how much he cares. And he cannot let Mitch know that.

Already, the way he can’t make himself let go of Mitch says far, _far_ too much.

 _Leave, coward. Run away,_ leers the cackling voice. With Mitch calm, Josh’s own anxiety spirals. _Leave. He can’t know. Don’t be selfish._

Selfish.

So as Mitch’s hands spasm on his arms and his head begins to tip back against Josh’s shoulder, nose brushing his cheek, Josh tears himself away.

He tears himself away, heart tearing apart with it, and flees out the door.

He ignores Mitch’s yell echoing into the hallway as he runs towards the lifts, desperate and aching to get away.

_“Josh!”_

He ignores the way Pat’s door flies open at the sound, the confusion in his voice as he calls after Josh, to Mitch when he doesn’t answer.

The emergency exit sign glows next to the silver gleam of the lift doors.

He doesn’t need to see his own face right now.

So Josh runs down the ten flights of stairs to the floor where the gym is located and spends the next forty-three minutes sprinting on the treadmill, terror the only fuel spitting and blazing inside the barren wasteland of his body, until there are no thoughts in his head and all he can feel is the exhausted burn in his lungs and the screaming protest of his battered muscles after an already horrific series where he had bowled over a hundred overs, instead of the way the re-opened wound of his heart weeps and pleads at him to just _please_ go back upstairs.

It’s only when he can’t run anymore that he notices the small red smudges of blood around his forearms where Mitch’s fingers had been holding onto him, cut on the glass in the bathroom.

The irony of Mitch leaving marks on him is too much to bear.

He stumbles off the treadmill, bare feet throbbing with the blisters from the day, muscles cramping with the excessive impact. His back twinges. The piercing pains are a welcome distraction from the way his heart is screaming at him.

As his throat rasps with his grating breath, bent over his knees to try and keep his wits about him without fainting amidst the popping black spots bursting across his vision, Josh wonders what JL would say if they found him passed out on the floor of the hotel gym with no shoes at nine pm. Probably send him to a hospital and call him an idiot when he woke up.

“Hoff! Mate, what the _fuck_ are you doing?!”

Josh barely manages to look up at the blurry silhouette in the doorway of the gym before the ensuing head rush has a black wave crashing across his vision and he passes out at the foot of the treadmill. His head slams against the foot of the treadmill and a gasp falls out of him, ears ringing as darkness swims through his head.

Someone shouts.

_“Shit!”_

All Josh sees before he goes under are the wide, frantic eyes of David as he falls to his knees next to him. His head pulses to the drums that have settled in his chest and he just hopes that Mitch is okay.

“Is that blood on your arms— _Candice, call a fucking ambulance!_ Jesus, Josh, what the _fuck_ did you do?! _”_

*

The light is piercing as his eyes slip open, adding to the pounding death march in his head, and he groans with it, pain exploding in starbursts across his vision.

“On your left, mate.”

He coughs, throat dry, tipping his head to the left and squinting through slitted eyes at the blurry form on an armchair.

It’s then that the beeping of the heart monitor trickles through the woolliness of his brain and the uncomfortable pull of the canula on the inside of his elbow has him glancing at the tubing leading up to an IV drip.

Hospital. He’s in _hospital._

The blurry form in the armchair beside the bed leans forward. The drawn face and kind eyes of Justin Langer shift into focus and Josh attempts to sit up as that instinctive response kicks in before his head protests with a painful throb and he collapses back against the pillow.

“Don’t be stupid, mate, lay back down.” JL sighs and then catches his eyes with a shake of his head. “How’re you feeling?”

“’lright,” Josh croaks. He winces as the blinds shift to let in a sharp ray of sunlight. “What happened?”

JL’s eyes flicker somewhere up and over Josh’s body before dropping back to him. “You don’t remember?”

A stab of fear pulses in his gut. “Should I?”

“My name is Dr Fernando. I am glad to see you awake,” an unfamiliar female voice says from behind him. Josh turns his head slowly to come face to face with the doctor who comes to stand at the foot of the bed. “You fainted, Mr Hazlewood. From severe exhaustion and dehydration, and when you fainted, you hit your head on the base of the treadmill. I’m told Mr Warner found you.”

The words trigger a hazy memory of feet pounding down a hallway instead, a flooding sense of terror, hands cradling his forearms.

Of a familiar voice yelling his name.

Mitch.

Everything rushes back into his brain like the snap of a rubber band.

_Oh. Oh fuck._

“Mr Hazlewood?”

He blinks, throat tight. “Yeah, yes. I remember.” He breathes in and out. “How long was I out?”

“From the combined effects of your extreme overexertion, dehydration and impact to your head, you were unconscious for approximately five and a half hours. Though that length of time had less to do with hitting your head and more to do with the exhaustion,” Dr Fernando says. She flicks through the chart in her hands. “You woke up briefly four hours ago but the sedatives knocked you back to sleep.”

She looks at him, eyes assessing, before turning to JL.

“I’ve informed your team doctor, but to get you up to speed, Mr Langer, his CT scans and ECG reports have come back clear. Physically, Mr Hazlewood is battling intense exhaustion, plus his muscles and joints have taken quite a beating. Rest, and _a lot of it_ , will be the biggest recommendation I can make once he’s taken home. You can leave, Mr Hazlewood, once the IV has replenished the lost fluids and electrolytes.”

Josh can only nod. “Thank you.”

JL rubs his chin across the knuckles of the hands braced under his chin before he pushes to his feet.

“Noted, Dr Fernando,” JL says. He nods firmly. “We’ll keep an eye on him for the next few weeks. Thank you very much.”

As the doctor steps out of the room and the door shuts behind her, JL’s eyes land on him. Standing like this next to his bed, JL almost seems to loom above him and Josh shrinks away from the scrutiny.

“Alright, let’s hear it then,” he mutters, voice raspy. “Call me an idiot.”

“Do you want to sit up, mate?”

Startled, Josh catches JL’s gaze.

JL gestures at the remote for the bed. “D’you wanna sit up and have a drink before I call you an idiot?”

There’s a hint of buried amusement in the words and dumbly, Josh just nods.

As the bed raises and he settles into a half-seated position, he sips on the water JL hands him. “I’m sorry,” he says after a beat.

JL watches him for a moment. “Josh, mate, what were you thinking?” he finally asks. “I mean, what the _hell_ was going through your head? I know the loss was painful, _I know_ it was _,_ trust me it fucking destroyed me, but you have people you can talk to—”

“It wasn’t just losing,” Josh blurts out, startling even himself as he interrupts a man he has never dared to interrupt once in the past two and a half years. He grimaces when JL’s eyebrows rise. “It wasn’t just that, um.”

The silence is encouraging, exuding the same quiet patience JL had moulded into himself, giving Josh the space to talk.

Panic stabs suddenly through him as he opens his mouth but he refuses to listen.

“Mitch,” he says quietly.

JL exhales. “Starcy?” He asks. “Yeah, he was really going through it last night, wasn’t he? We had to pay some damages and keep things quiet on that front but he’s okay, mate. Reckon those vultures in the media got into him a bit strong this time ‘round.”

Relief bubbles in his chest but he shakes his head slowly. “I was with him. Before I…yeah. I was with him and he—I—there’s a lot going on,” he says finally, ears heating up at the thought of coming out to JL, of even telling him that _feelings_ are involved in the mess of this situation. “It’s not important. I fucked up. I’m sorry.”

There’s a moment before JL says anything that Josh almost laughs because god, did anything he just said make _any_ fucking sense?

But it passes and JL uncrosses his arms to rub a finger across an eyebrow, breathing out a disbelieving sound. When he raises his head to look at Josh, the exasperation is almost fond.

“Alright,” he sighs. “First, let me call you a colossal idiot because that stunt you pulled last night gave me a bloody heart attack when Davey called saying he was in a bloody ambulance with you and I don’t need any more reasons to shorten my life than this job. Second,” here, JL raises his eyes heavenward in what looks like a prayer before he looks back at him. “Here’s a conversation I swore I wouldn’t have. Hoff, mate, if this whole thing is about you and Starcy, I reckon you two just need to talk. Sort it out.”

The blood drains from his face before it comes flooding back in a hot flush that explodes in his cheeks and ears. _What the fuck—_

“I—how—me and Starcy?” he asks weakly.

JL snorts. “Doesn’t take a genius to see what’s going on. Talk it out, mate, I’m sure you boys can sort out any misunderstandings like adults.”

Maybe Josh should just die right here. At least it would be convenient. Straight to the hospital morgue. Apparently he doesn’t need to come out to JL because _JL already fucking knows._

Fuck.

_What the fuck._

“Alright, mate, I’m going to head back to the hotel because I reckon your best mate is out there pacing like he has been for the last ten hours on legs that really should be resting, but no one listens to their old coach anymore, do they…”

JL is still muttering under his breath as he leaves.

Not two second later, Pat steps into the room.

“You absolute _dickhead_ ,” he says.

Josh shrinks back into the pillows at the electricity sparking in Pat’s deep blue eyes.

_Shit._

*

When Josh manages to convince Pat that he would be perfectly fine inside his own hotel room and no, he doesn’t need Pat to come and keep an eye on him, _no he won’t do anything else stupid,_ he escapes Pat’s furrowed brows and the incredulous twist of his mouth into the safety of his room.

“God, mate, you’re such a mother hen!” He calls through the closing door.

“Someone’s gotta look after you ‘cos clearly you won’t!” Pat’s voice fades away with his footsteps. _“Idiot…”_

Josh is still chuckling softly when he shuffles further into the room but it dies in his throat when he sees the figure sat hunched at the edge of his bed.

He blinks. Once. Twice. Then again.

Mitch remains on the bed.

Okay, so not a hallucination and he doesn’t need to get institutionalised for insanity.

He pinches the inside of his elbow. _“Ow,”_ he mutters absently, rubbing over the stinging spot, because he isn’t dreaming either.

There’s a key card laying on the duvet beside him which explains, at least physically, how Mitch came to be here in his room. But God help Josh because there is no logical or emotional or even hypothetical reason why Mitch should be in his room. Mitch hadn’t spoken to him in almost nine days now and Josh can’t see a reason why he would start now.

A faint smile flickers across Mitch’s mouth when he looks up at Josh but it disappears so fast, Josh isn’t sure it was ever there, much like he still isn’t sure Mitch is here at all and not a projection of the buried yearning in his chest.

Seeing him this close, in his room surrounded by familiar things, just the two of them…

It knocks over something inside Josh.

Mitch’s eyes are serious, expression unreadable as he stares at him across the room. Josh wants to brush his thumbs along his cheeks until he pulls out the creasing dimples by his mouth and Mitch’s eyes crinkle with the smile that never fails to make his heart leap up like a lost dog.

He looks good, is the thing.

Josh knows he looks and feels like utter shit, traces of exhaustion and close to eighteen hours in a hospital leaving his skin feeling dry and body gritty. He can still smell that godawful pungent, sterile odour sticking to his skin. There’s a bump on his head the size of a grapefruit and blisters on his feet, eyes swollen from a fitful, sedated sleep. He looks great right now, yeah.

If Mitch still has any lingering feelings for him, they would vanish at the sheer, horrific sight of him.

But Mitch, despite the smudged bruises under his eyes and the downward tilt of his mouth, looks awake and alive, weary eyes a beautiful riverstone brown in the late afternoon sunlight. His lips are pink, so pink it makes something seize in Josh’s chest with an overpowering urge to kiss them, lower lip flushed like Mitch has been biting it.

The strong line of Mitch’s clean-shaven jaw is pulled taught and the slope of his neck has Josh’s eyes dropping to that divot between his collarbones he’s always personally attacked by, t-shirt pulled down by the sunglasses hooked on the neckline. He kind of wants to kiss that little patch of skin too.

 _Stop looking,_ a little voice prowls. _He isn’t yours to look at, coward._

Mitch is looking at him when Josh shakes himself out of his trance as those hissed words throw icy water across his face, ears hot and fighting the heat that threatens to spill into his cheeks.

“Done?”

Josh almost swallows his tongue. “What?” He asks weakly.

The way his knees are shaking is the lingering effect of his own stupidity from last night and have absolutely nothing to do with Mitch’s unwavering, yet somehow _teasing_ focus on him.

“Are you done? Looking at me?” There’s a hint of those crinkles by his eyes when Mitch shifts to sit up straight.

 _Yes, are you? How dare you look at him, let him see you want him. Don’t be fucking selfish, _that little voice snarls.

Josh opens his mouth and then closes it again, reeling.

Mitch looks away for a second before his gaze shifts back to him, expression shuttering. “You alright?” he asks eventually when it’s clear that Josh isn’t going to say anything. “Pat told me you hit your head last night.”

“What are you doing here?” Josh blurts out in reply.

Something tightens in Mitch’s face. “Why did you leave?”

Wildly, Josh wonders if emotions count as unnecessary exertion as his heart thumps against his ribs. Maybe he could beg out of this conversation on medical advice.

“Leave?”

“Yesterday.”

Josh tries to calm his breathing. The grapefruit on his head throbs in sympathy. “A lotta things happened yesterday.”

 _Like losing. Like not being enough. Like not being enough for you_. Like—

Well.

A lot of things.

Mitch’s mouth twitches up to the side like he wants to snarl at him, eyes cutting away to the side before they settle on him again, glittering under the overhead lights. “You came in there and fucking held me together like you could stop me from fucking falling apart and then you fucking left. Just like that, you left like you couldn’t even look me in the eye after that.”

It’s like he’s been blindsided by a semi-trailer ploughing through him.

His head spins.

_Held me together. You fucking held me together._

“You did,” Mitch says after a moment, quieter. He drags a hand through his hair. “You left me there but you did. You did hold me together. Josh.”

His name shouldn’t sound that good coming out of Mitch’s mouth like that, it shouldn’t sound like a well-worn, familiar, _affectionate_ thing like a stone smoothed out by a river, the punctuation to Mitch’s sentences, like it belongs in Mitch’s voice. It should sound like sacrilege, like something Josh doesn’t deserve after what he’s done, how he’s treated Mitch and that soft confession Josh had torn up and spat back in Mitch’s face.

It’s fine. It’s not like he has nightmares or anything. Not at all.

“I’m really tired,” Josh almost whispers, guilt rolling in his stomach. The excuse, despite the kernel of truth in it, leaks feebly out of him. “Maybe you should—”

“Are you ashamed of it? Me?”

It startles him, the accusation of that.

Mitch is resolute, still, eyes shadowed. “Are you ashamed of me—?”

 _“No!”_ The word explodes out of Josh and rings from the corners of the room. But all Josh can do is stare at Mitch because no, _no—_ “No. Never. I—Ashamed of _you?_ What the fuck, Mitch, of course not!”

“Then why did you lie? Because I know you did, okay, I, _fuck,_ I know you did because I couldn’t have imagined the way you used to look at me, what we had— _god,_ even the way you’re looking at me now—Why did you tell me you could never—you looked me in the fucking eye and lied to me, Josh.”

“Because I don’t deserve you!” he shouts, finally. There is no relief in the confession and it scrapes blood as it crawls out of his throat before bursting free. “I don’t fucking deserve you, _Mitch,_ you, god, you could do fucking miles better than me any day of the week!”

It physically hurts to look at Mitch but he does, head pounding and heart racing, but it breaks inside him when Mitch’s gobsmacked expression flickers in that instant into bright-eyed, diamond-edged anger.

“Mitch—”

“What,” Mitch snaps. “So you just decided that?”

Panic seethes in his gut. “Please, don’t—”

“Didn’t you? You reject me because _you_ think _I_ can do better? Because you get to decide what I want? You think because you have feelings for me, because you _like_ me, that you know better? You don’t trust me to know what I want?”

“Shut up!” Josh yells, hoarse and shattered. He knows the walls are thin but he doesn’t care anymore. “Shut up! Just—you know damn fucking well I trust you and I have never been ashamed of you, I could never fucking be. I’m ashamed of _me,_ I’m fucking embarrassed because of me, Mitch, not you. Never you. I’m stupid and terrified and dumb as all fucking hell and I just—”

His sharp inhale cuts into his throat like shards of glass.

“It’s because you’re genuinely the best fucking thing I have in my life and I am fucking terrified to lose you if I fucked things up. And I already _have,_ ” the humourless laugh that spills out of him is insane, “I already did and we aren’t even together!”

He’s panting as he finally manages to clamp his mouth shut, throat aching and heart pounding. He just wants to scream now that the dam has broken, wants to yell and rant and let all the fear, insecurity and overwhelming despair of missing Mitch, of being in love with Mitch, just explode out of him. To have Mitch seeing him like this is worse than anything he could imagine.

This, this is why he didn’t want to confess.

Mitch is unreadable, hands fisted by his sides as he stares at Josh.

“You’re a fucking idiot.”

Josh almost laughs. “That much,” he says, rubbing a hand over his face, “I know.” But he swallows past the ache in his throat and flexes his fingers. “But at least try to see where I’m coming from.”

“I see.” Mitch’s jaw spasms. “I can see perfectly well. And I see that you thought things through, very thorough of you, Josh, really. Congrats. I’m glad you fucking decided that you know what I deserve more than I do. Really that’s… _very_ thoughtful of you.”

“Mitch—”

“No, really, that’s,” Mitch grimaces at him, the shadow of a smile. “Really, very thoughtful. Thank you. And what if I decided that what I deserve is you? That what I fucking deserve, Josh, is not you trampling all over my stupid heart because of some moral crisis and instead at least give me the respect of not lying to my face?”

He can’t breathe. “I don’t want you to—” _to hate me,_ he chokes out. _I don’t want you to hate me more than I already hate myself._

“I don’t,” Mitch hisses, that thread of sardonic calm snapping for a moment. “I am trying to tell you that I don’t. I’m here, I am obviously fucking here standing in front of you and begging for this conversation like a complete idiot because I do not hate you.”

His whole world tilts for a moment and when the wooziness fades away, all Josh can do is gasp air into his lungs. He feels on the verge of crumpling to his knees.

“Josh,” Mitch says.

His tense expression shatters open then, voice lilting with a tone Josh has never heard from him. It shocks him into silence, the way his name spills out of Mitch this time like it’s a _plea._

 _“Josh,”_ Mitch says again. “I need you to dare.”

Josh stares at him, frozen. His thoughts are dizzying as they swarm inside his head. _I need you_ blares like a warning siren in his head, neon lights in the pitch black of his brain. _Josh, I need you._

Mitch pulls himself to his feet, taking a step forward, hands wrung in front of him. “You said you wouldn’t dare to feel something for me.” Gleaming brown eyes catch his, warm and pleading, eyebrows furrowed above them. “You need to fucking dare to like me, you have to—Josh, there is nobody else on this fucking planet I want more than you. You have to believe me more than whatever your brain has been making you believe. _Please.”_

“How can I?” Josh asks, shaking.

“Because I love _you.”_

_Because I love you._

“Josh, I love you.”

_He loves me._

_He’s being nice—_

_Nice?_ Josh snaps back at last. _No._ He looks at the eyes, the burnished deep bronze eyes that implore with him to listen and sees the hope beneath, the sincerity. _No. No he…fuck, he loves me._

Mitch looks lost in the wake of that, shoulders rounded under the weight of his words, the fight visibly draining out of him. His head hangs as he scrubs his hands over his hair with a sigh.

“ _God, what the fuck am I doing…It’s over, you fucking idiot, let him go.”_

Josh barely catches the near-silent, muttered words but they pierce his chest like knives.

As Mitch moves to make for the door, to just… _brush past him_ like he can just leave like that after what just happened, Josh decides that for once, his stupid beating heart is right.

Here Mitch is, for the second time, confessing to him, pleading with him to just let him love him, to let himself feel what he does. Mitch, always the braver one, settling his bruised, bleeding heart in Josh’s hands for the second time even when Josh had thrown it back in Mitch’s face the first time.

_Not again._

Because Mitch is right.

For a teetering moment, he has a sudden sense of standing with his toes hanging over the edge of a cliff

Josh throws himself forward in an eerily familiar motion but this time, this time he collides with Mitch’s chest, revelling in the startled grunt that’s pushed out of him as Josh wraps his arms around Mitch’s waist and shoves his chin over his shoulder.

He can feel his own heart battering against Mitch’s chest, syncopated and racing, the steady beat of Mitch’s soothing against his own chest through their shirts.

It takes a second but where Mitch had frozen before he unravels now, sinking into the hug in a split second, arms snapping tight around Josh’s shoulders until they’re clutching at each other, fingers like talons as they press into muscle.

As Mitch’s arms close around him, as he feels the warmth of his body and the slide of his cheeks against his ear, Josh finally feels like he can breathe.

“I—” his throat convulses around the words, strangling him, but he clears it, shifting his arms tighter around Mitch and squeezing his eyes shut. “I lied.”

“What?”

“I said I lied,” Josh says quietly. “I’m sorry, I—”

“Say it.”

Josh pauses.

“Say it,” Mitch murmurs by his ear, voice low and warm and smooth like a rich dark roast. “You gotta say it, Josh.”

_He does, doesn’t he?_

Josh pulls back just enough that he can press his forehead against Mitch’s shoulder, needing to hide his eyes, his face, to get a grip on the way his heart tries to leap out of his chest right into Mitch’s and make room for itself right next to his heart in the safe cage of his ribs.

“Reckon it should be easier to say something I’ve thought about every day for way too long,” he mutters.

The soft, muted laugh that Mitch exhales skims down his spine like ghosting fingers, goosebumps shifting over his body.

Everything tingles and it’s so stupid that he feels _shy_ despite it all in this electric moment where he feels terrified and certain and on the edge of a precipice he never thought he would be standing on.

“J—”

“I love you.”

Mitch’s words trail off into a hitched breath _Josh_ feels, catching against his own chest as Mitch jerks with it.

“I love you,” Josh whispers again to Mitch’s collarbone and his heart settles, safe and sound, in Mitch's safe hands.

 _“Fuck.”_ Mitch’s hand slides up his neck to cradle Josh’s head, long fingers warm and fingertips pressing into his skull like Mitch wants to absorb him through his skin. It’s kind of insane, the elation that floods through Josh at the idea. “ _Fuck.”_

Suddenly the grip on the back of his shirt tightens and he’s yanked backwards away from the safety of his hiding place where he had essentially shoved his face into Mitch’s neck, backward until Mitch’s eyes meet his and they’re luminous with heat and disbelief as they flick over Josh’s face like he can’t believe Josh is real.

Josh has a feeling he knows how that feels.

He opens his mouth to say something but Mitch cuts him off as he lurches forward that little space between them and crushes his mouth to Josh’s with a muffled sound.

The kiss is a slow, hazy heat between them, stretching like warm caramel and it pools, jittery and warm at the base of his spine as Mitch licks at his lower lip and dips into his open mouth, pulling Josh closer.

Josh slides his hands around Mitch’s waist and up the warm skin of his arms, thumbing across the sharp cut of that jaw, curling his fingers against Mitch’s scalp, and kisses him slow and bruising, until his entire body is buzzing with the feeling of Mitch’s canines pressing into his lip. The shivers down his spine have nothing to do with the icy air-conditioning.

He can hardly breathe with the way Mitch is pressing into him, hands crushing his hips like firebrands where they slip under his shirt.

There’s a sudden rapid knock at the door which has them springing apart, wild-eyed and rumpled.

They stare at each other with wide eyes as the knocking continues before it abruptly cuts away.

Josh thinks his heart might literally fall out of his chest with the sudden fear that stabs through him at the sound.

They pause to listen.

 _“I wouldn’t,”_ Pat’s faint voice comes from beyond the door and that’s enough for Josh.

If he says anything else, they don’t hear him.

Josh steps slowly back into Mitch’s arms and pulls him into another kiss, gold in his veins like the first blush of sunrise and all the hesitant hope that comes with the dawn of a new day.

“Love you,” he says softly into the warm air between them.

“I love you,” Mitch says, arms settling around him, hands warm on his back.

 _“What’d you mean they’re ‘dating’?!”_ JL bellows out in the hallway.

Josh can only smile into Mitch’s mouth as Mitch pushes him towards the bed.

“No strenuous activity for forty-eight hours,” he murmurs against Mitch’s jaw, tipping his head back as Mitch noses along the stretch of his neck.

Mitch hums, pressing a burning kiss to the pounding pulse at his throat which makes Josh shudder as Mitch slides hot hands across his stomach.

“Just lay back and relax,” is pressed in wet, biting kisses to his mouth as Mitch comes back up to him as if he’s drawn back to him helplessly. “I’ll do all the work.”

A languid laugh bubbles between them. _“‘Lie back and think of England’,_ is that it?”

Mitch makes an offended noise as he pulls back and gently shoves Josh back onto the bed, eyes blazing as he stares at the place where Josh’s shirt rides up on his stomach.

Josh bites the corner of his lip and settles back on his elbows.

“I’d be fucking offended if you thought about the Pommes while I’ve got my mouth on you,” Mitch grumbles as he kneels on the bed between Josh’s legs.

As hot as the mental image is, all Josh can do is laugh and reach up to pull Mitch down halfway between them to kiss him, hard and slow and deep until they’re both panting, shivering a little with it, and there’s a molten heat lingering in Josh’s veins.

“Just kiss me,” Josh murmurs. “We have time.”

“Why do you hate me?” Mitch sighs, kissing him. “Why?”

“I’ve just come from the hospital. I need to shower before you do anything.”

He can feel the face Mitch pulls against his cheek as he pulls away from another helpless kiss. “That’s fair. You smell like disinfectant.”

Josh laughs aloud. _Sexy._

“Shower together?” Mitch asks, voice hopeful and low, rough as he presses the words to the sensitive skin beneath Josh’s ear. “I’ve been told I’m good with my hands _and_ I can show you how much you really do deserve me.”

Josh loves him so much he can’t breathe and for once, that little voice in his head is nowhere to be found.

*

“How ‘bout that drink, then?” Pat asks elsewhere.

Justin gapes at his star bowler. “Mate, it’s like noon.”

Pat’s face twists into this enigmatic, charming smile and says, “It’s happy hour somewhere, Alfie, and after the last ten days of those two pulling me in all sorts of directions, I need a solid drink.”

As Pat turns on his heel, Justin stares after him for a few seconds before scoffing incredulously and following him down the hallway.

He glances over his shoulder at the door where Josh and Starcy are and still doesn’t know how the fuck he missed that.

But it’s only when he remembers his role in mediating Tim and Steve’s mid-series marital spat that he realises why.

Justin steals a shot from Pat’s side of the table and throws it back before he goes back to nursing his beer.

“Anything I should know about your love life, Patty?”

When Pat stares at him with wide, wide _guilty_ eyes, Justin decides that no joke is worth any more knowledge of the relationship drama in this damn sport.

“Never you mind. Another round?”

*

_…we must’ve been written in the stars but if we weren’t, baby i’ll dip my pen into the horizon and carve us into the unending sky…_

— me, from a poem I’ll never write

**Author's Note:**

> And JL proceeds to nurse a glass of very expensive whiskey because the series is over and god this is NOT what he imagined when he asked Josh to talk it out with Starcy. 
> 
> I hope you liked it and enjoyed reading it!! Thank you so much for reading, I'm eternally grateful <3 please comment your thoughts, feelings, screaming and/or displeasure below mfmffmf I appreciate everything so much. 
> 
> Thanks y'all


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